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PA School Defends Web-Cam Spying As Security Measure, Denies Misuse
tekgoblin writes "The Lower Merion School District of Pennsylvania was recently accused of privacy invasion. Now the school has released an official response to the allegations. According to the school, the security feature was installed in the laptops as an anti-theft device and was not intended to invade privacy. The software that was installed would take a photo of the person using the laptop after it was stolen to give to the authorities. Now this may be what it was intended for, but it seems that someone didn't get the memo."
The district's claim that it "has not used the tracking feature or web cam for any other purpose or in any other manner whatsoever" doesn't square with the allegations which set off this whole storm. And if there was nothing wrong with it, why does the school say it won't start using the snooping feature again without "express written notification to all students and families"?
Sure. That's what the body scanners at the airports for as well.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
So then why was a student reprimanded for their in home behaviour with a picture from the webcam used as evidence?
The school denies Misuse, however they have photographic evidence of a child committing inappropriate behavior in the child's bedroom.
Therefore the School has already committed a misuse of said camera's. The real question is why hasn't the school fired the people involved. there was no evidence of any laptops being stolen therefore the system shouldn't have been turned on to begin with. The only reason the camera's were turned on would be for misuse.
So the school district is lying to cover themselves. They could get out of this much easier if they simply fired a couple of people and blamed those directly responsible, and their bosses for the policy.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Webcams hardly equal a lojack. Seems to me, this whole incident is nothing more than the reflection of our society's values of surveilance absent privacy, all in the name of security of course. As is said on The Simpsons, "Won't someone think of the children?!?"
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If cartoons are CP, then fuzzy grey images out real kids are definitely CP.
Double standards suck. We need consistency.
If you wanted an anti-theft system, why not buy LoJack? It has to be at least as reliable as turning on the camera. Look: in order to catch the thief with a camera, you'd either have to recognize them or the location in which they're sitting. What are the odds of that working out for you? (Yes, I know it has happened before. But out of how many attempts?)
I'll bet that the district could even have gotten a bulk, educational discount on such software. They might even have spent less than it would cost to pay a person to troll through the camera images over a few years, even.
You're right. It's he-said, she-said. But since the school district does have controls in place to protect against abuses (only two people have access to the function, and this access is logged), and because I'd be very, very surprised if the district was foolish enough to act in the way that the suit alleges, I'm siding firmly on the side of "someone needs to provide some proof before I condemn anyone" - something the sensationalist media seems to be trying very hard doesn't happen.
Now this may be what it was intended for, but it seems that someone didn't get the memo - or so the plaintiffs allege. ...why does the school say it won't start using the snooping feature again without "express written notification to all students and families"? I don't think it indicates anything at all that the district will more clearly communicate the existence and usage patterns of the software before they activate it again. The district has successfully used the software to recover 18 of 42 lost laptops, so if anything it seems like they might need even stronger software than this (though this is still $18,000 worth of taxpayer money the software has saved). Parents and students were surprised to know of its existence, and the district feels in retrospect that whatever communication was made in this regard was insufficient. That sounds like a reasonable action to me.
I still find it far more plausible that the student took a photo himself and sent it to his buddies, than that one of two people with access to the system abused it, then exposed their abuse to a principal (who is not one of the two with access), who decided instead of doing something about the abuse, to then further abuse it themselves, and expose the abuse to the student and the student's parents. Sorry, one kid being kinda stupid is far more likely than two adults being very stupid.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
The news reports say that the cameras were activated in this case plus 42 other cases. If the school is telling the truth they should have documentary evidence of claims of theft or loss for all 43 cases.
If they can document all 43 cases, they're still in hot water. If they can't then they're caught in yet another lie.
I'm so sorry but we need to treat you and your cohorts just like we treat everyone else who is alleged, on television, of being guilty of a crime which means we will convict you, throw you in jail and make sure the other inmates know what you did...
It's only fair, so be sure to enjoy your daily beatings and o, the rapes.
A few days ago, most of us were still waiting to see if this story was in fact exaggerated and/or untrue: what about the school's side of the story?
But it appears that the initial impressions were correct: the school is in fact just scrabbling around for excuses ("It was a security feature, promise!"). This suggests that there was in fact no good reason or alternate story.
Which is good, because I can go and get properly angry now.
Following the logic of their stated reasons for using the on-board camera to take a peek at student's private lives, I respectfully submit that the individuals which are most at risk are therefore those most in need of the kind of protective surveillance this school offers. Right? Now it is common knowledge that attractive females are, more than most other groups, at risk. Both in school and outside.
It therefore follows, with an elegant inevitability, that surveillance should focus on the 5% most attractive females of the school. We are then talking about continuous surveillance of course.
I recommend enhancing security by also enabling the laptops' microphone. Besides, are those laptop cameras any good for taking infra-red pictures?
For answers from the school districts side: Update from Dr. McGinley regarding high school student laptop security - 2/19/10 - better than the link in the submission or even the article for that matter.
There's one way the school could be telling the truth about this. They didn't say this explicitly, so it's not clear, but:
The lawsuit alleges that the school accused the student of inappropriate behavior. That behavior could have been reporting his laptop as "stolen", then continuing to use it. The school maintains that they only use the webcams to take a still photo when a laptop has been reported stolen, to aid in recovering it. If the laptop was reported stolen, the school took a picture, they saw that the student who reported it was the one using it, and they confronted the student with this evidence, that would explain both the lawsuit and the school's position.
Sort of odd that the school's response wouldn't explain that, if that is indeed what happened. But people tend to omit important details like that when there's a lawsuit pending, on advice of counsel...
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maybe while the feature was introduced for all the right reasons (recovering lost/stolen laptops), they're admitting that students/parents should've been notified? i.e. they're admitting they made a mistake, but denying that they are pedophiles who used this "feature" to spy on acne-faced teenage boys masturbating to vogue magazine.
Now that's just ridiculous! I highly doubt teenage boys are masturbating to vogue magazine. Especially with the school-issued laptop computer (i.e. gateway to the universe of porn) right in front of them.
You are only hearing one side of the story here. The side the family wants to push to get a pay day from the school district.
What if the student lied and said the laptop was stolen? The school district hasn't said anything publicly about this because of a lawsuit. Could you blame them?
Lets pretend there was a world where the student or family reported the laptop as stolen. The school activates antitheft software to recover the taxpayers property. They find that the student and family still have the laptop. Instead of owning up to the theft they LIE and sue the school to get out of what they have done.
If they started using the cameras to randomly take pictures of students than the school is looking at a well deserved lawsuit. Without question this is a violation of any number of laws. If the web cam pictures were taken in response to a lost or stolen laptop, than this entire thing has been much ado about nothing and the lawsuit is without merit. The only question of note on this is if the web-cams were activated for tracking anything other than lost or stolen laptops. If this kid was incidentally caught because he stole the laptop and was captured when they used the webcam to track the laptop than it changes the entire story.
Certainly people have occasionally tracked down their stolen laptop, iphone or whatnot by remotely activating the cameras before. Such stories have run on Slashdot before and the consensus has always been along the lines of /hoot!/ The fact that the tracking is done by a third party shouldn't change the view that it's ok try to recover your lost or stolen property. This is a very different issue than routine monitoring software that monitors the usage of the laptops. That kind of software is used by employers and schools on a daily basis, and I've seen some people mix up the two issues when they are unrelated.
Based on this Laptop Capabilities at Home info from the LMSD website, they do expect the kids to take the laptops home.
and we promise not to ever do it again.
I'd like to see a mashup of the blog I ran into earlier today with pairs of chatroulette web captures, but with the "you" picture in each case being the shocked (simply shocked!) face of some school official from this place.
I'm not suggesting that the students should all sit at home masturbating in leopard costumes and makeup while butt-dialing the school to report that their laptops have been stolen. There are many other fruitful scenarios that I am also not suggesting.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
This is as creepy as it can get, spying in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vza_bMuy42M
Uh, know, that's not what happened. There's a great deal of information about this incident on the web, I'll let you google it for yourself.
The students are allowed to take the laptops home and typically do so. One of the major goals of the program was to make sure that those who could not afford home computers would have access to one for doing homework blah blah blah.
What was apparently going on is the school was using the remote spy software they loaded onto the computers to spy on kids they thought (whether rightly or wrongly) were 'bad apples" to try and catch them doing something. The vice principal saw him taking what was believed to be some kind of pill and saved the photo. He says it was a Mike N Ike candy. Maybe, maybe not. I don't think anyone could discern that on something with the resolution of a web cam. In any case, even if he was popping pills, they seem to have opened a legal can of worms, and it's pretty unlikely that the photo would be admissible as evidence.
At least 8 students were spied on and are suing the district as students Doe 1-8.
Even if we assume for the sake of argument that this kid is in fact a bad apple and does use and/or deal drugs, etc., what the school did is far worse than what he may or may not have done. There's a reason the Constitution places such tight controls on government power: the authors knew first hand what happens when you don't. Sadly, a general lack of vigilance has resulted in the government running roughshod over the Constitution on a pretty regular basis and usually getting away with it.
I'm nearing 50; those of you who are now in your twenties or in high school may be looking at how much freedom we have lost in this country since you were in primary school, but let me tell you, it's far worse than you think. The amount of freedom we've lost since _I_ was in primary school is astonishing, and we're get it from both sides. On one hand we have neocons who think an all-powerful central government is the way to promote security and allegedly conservative values, and on the other hand we have the neolibs/progressives, who are really just socialists and communists who don't call themselves that.
The authors of the Constitution and leaders of the US revolution were flaming liberals of their day, but they were liberals in the classical sense, far different from most of those who call themselves liberals today. John Kennedy, who remains the darling of the left, has far more in common with true conservatives today than he does with those who call themselves liberals today.
What we need to get back to is a highly reigned-in federal government, because any powers not explicitly assigned to it are reserved for the states, and highly reigned in state governments because any powers not explicitly assigned to them are reserved for the people, who are the source and seat of sovereignty. It's been a long time since we really had a government that was of, by, and for the people.
I'm not a libertarian and have never before voted libertarian, but I will be in the next elections. Both the Republicans and the Democrats need to be punished. The Libertarian party looks like a good club with which to beat them both.
Matt Skala's modest proposal was apparently written before this story broke. Yes, his satire is outpacing reality, but only just barely.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca